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About Optics & Photonics TopicsOSA Publishing developed the Optics and Photonics Topics to help organize its diverse content more accurately by topic area. This topic browser contains over 2400 terms and is organized in a three-level hierarchy. Read more.

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Optica

Author & Reviewer Resource Center

2018 Journal Citation Reports® Data for OSA Journals

OSA is proud that its collection of 16 flagship, partnered and co-published peer-reviewed journals continues to publish the most articles (33%) and receive the most citations (40%) in the field of optics and photonics.

The JCR includes an EigenfactorTM Score for each journal. OSA's Optics Express, Optics Letters and Applied Optics are among the top five journals in the Optics category based on Eigenfactor. See more information about Eigenfactor in the Journal Metrics section below.

Journal

2017 Impact Factor

2017
Total
Citations

2017Eigenfactor Score

Rank by Impact Factor

Rank by Total Cites

Rank by Eigenfactor

Google Scholar h5-index

Adv Opt Photon

21.286

2050

0.00482

2

47

42

Optica

7.536

4366

0.02373

5

36

9

57

Photonics Research

5.242

1208

0.00399

10

54

47

30

J Lightwave Technol+

3.652

22458

0.03006

13

6

6

74

Opt Lett

3.589

66148

0.10358

14

3

4

77

Biomed Opt Express++

3.482

8120

0.02275

15

22

10

53

Opt Express

3.356

104686

0.19232

19

2

1

103

J Opt Commun Netw+++

2.742

2340

0.00539

24

46

39

39

Opt Mater Express^

2.566

4773

0.01272

30

34

26

39

J Opt Soc Am B

2.048

12830

0.01529

42

13

18

37

Chin Opt Lett

1.948

2542

0.00376

44

45

48

24

Appl Optics

1.791

45131

0.03826

49

4

5

46

J Opt Soc Am A

1.566

13980

0.01095

53

10

28

32

J Opt Soc Korea

0.637

528

0.00103

84

74

67

13

J Opt Technol

0.392

762

0.00061

87

65

82

12

Curr Opt Photonics^^

N/A

5

0

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

+The Journal of Lightwave Technology (JLT) is also included in the Engineering, Electrical & Electronic category. Its 2017 rankings in that category are #44 of 260 journals by Impact Factor and #18 by Total Cites. In addition, it is listed in the Telecommunications category, where it is ranked #17 out of 87 journals by Impact Factor and #3 by Total Cites.
++Biomedical Optics Express is also included in the Biochemical Research Methods category. Its 2017 rankings in that category are #26 of 78 journals by Impact Factor and #27 by Total Cites. In addition, it is listed in the Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging category, where it is ranked #26 out of 128 journals by Impact Factor and #24 by Total Cites.
+++The Journal of Optical Communications and Networking (JOCN) is also included in the Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture category. Its 2017 rankings in that category are #9 of 52 journals by Impact Factor and #19 by Total Cites. In addition, it is listed in the Computer Science, Information Systems category, where it is ranked #42 out of 148 journals by Impact Factor and #41 by Total Cites. Finally, JOCN is also listed in the Telecommunications category, where it is ranked #30 out of 87 journals by Impact Factor and #35 by Total Cites.
^Optical Materials Express is also included in the Materials Science, Multidisciplinary category. Its 2016 ranking in that category is #105 of 285 journals by Impact Factor and #104 by Total Cites.
^^Current Optics and Photonics, formerly the Journal of the Optical Society of Korea, published by the Optical Society of Korea and available on OSA Publishing, was launched in February 2017.
NOTE: Applied Spectroscopy (AS), published by the Society of Applied Spectroscopy and available on OSA Publishing, has a 2017 Impact Factor of 1.642. It is included in the Spectroscopy category with rankings of #24 out of 42 journals by Impact Factor, #10 by Total Cites, and #15 by Eigenfactor score. In addition, it is listed in the Instruments and Instrumentation category, where it is ranked #31 out of 61 journals by Impact Factor, #14 by Total Cites, and #22 by Eigenfactor score.

Journal Metrics

Overview

There are many different journal evaluation metrics produced by several companies, each using different sets of data and time periods for their calculations. Most metrics, and all the metrics discussed below, focus on value for scientific and academic research (citations) and do not take into account other ways content is used (e.g. industrial and commercial applications). The below guide is meant to help authors and readers better understand some of the common metrics used to evaluate journal content.

Clarivate Analytics's Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Metrics:

Impact Factor:A metric meant to indicate the number of times the "average" article in the journal is cited. This number is the most widely used metric to evaluate a journal's content. The metric is based on citations in a particular year to articles published over the previous two years. An example of how an Impact Factor is calculated is below.

Total Citations:This is the number of total citations in a given year to all content ever published in a specific journal.

Immediacy Index:a measure of how quickly the "average article" in a journal is cited. The Immediacy index will tell you how often articles published in a given year are cited within the same year.

Cited Half-life:This figure is the median age of the articles cited in the given year. For example, in JCR 2012, Optics Letters has a cited half-life of 6.5 years. That means that articles published in Optics Letters between July 2006 and December 2012 account for 50% of all citations to Optics Letters articles in 2012.

Eigenfactor Score:a metric based on the number of times articles from the journal published in the past five years have been cited in the current year, but it also considers which journals have contributed these citations so that highly cited journals will influence the network more than lesser cited journals. References from one article in a journal to another article from the same journal are removed, so that Eigenfactor Scores are not influenced by journal self-citation.

Article Influence:determines the average influence of a journal's articles over the first five years after publication. It is calculated by dividing a journal's Eigenfactor Score by the number of articles in the journal, normalized as a fraction of all articles in all publications. The mean Article Influence Score is 1.00. A score greater than 1.00 indicates that each article in the journal has above-average influence. A score less than 1.00 indicates that each article in the journal has below-average influence.

h-index: The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each. For example, a publication with five articles cited by, respectively, 17, 9, 6, 3, and 2, has the h-index of 3.

h-core: The h-core of a publication is a set of top cited h articles from the publication. These are the articles that the h-index is based on. For example, the publication above has the h-core with three articles, those cited by 17, 9, and 6.

h-median: The h-median of a publication is the median of the citation counts in its h-core. For example, the h-median of the publication above is 9. The h-median is a measure of the distribution of citations to the articles in the h-core.

Finally, the h5-index, h5-core, and h5-median of a publication are, respectively, the h-index, h-core, and h-median of only those of its articles that were published in the last five complete calendar years.